Internal Incentive Goes Public

An eagle-eyed passer-by. A UK supermarket chain caught out. Sainsbury’s Romford Road store, Stratford, east London.

In case you’re small-screen constrained, the text promotes their;

Fifty pence challenge; Let’s encourage every customer to spend an additional 50p during each shopping trip between now and the year-end

There’s musings aplenty to take from this.

An obvious discussion point is how disastrous it is when a prospect gets wind of an internal sales incentive that you may be running. Especially one dependent upon their action.

Another is the imagery. It feels like a fairly well-to-do pink purse. A shiny fifty-pence coin standing proud against it.

And then we come to the actual ‘promo’.

Yes, I realise this is from retail – rather than our b2b-land – yet a revenue-based promotion somewhat troubles me. Turnover for vanity, profit for sanity …and all that.

Also what of this mystical method; “encourage”? How is this to be done exactly? Beyond creative “offers”, price “alterations”, free mini-chunks of cheese samples, desperate pleas at the checkout?

(As I write I’m remembering fondly a heap of up-, switch-, link- & cross-sell training from many moons ago…)

And what of the actual “target”. 50p. How on earth was amount this landed upon. How is it even measured? What percentage uplift could it possibly engender over the course of a day’s trading? It seems like such a miniscule amount to the extent that you wonder why they bother… until you uncover this startling stat;

Sainsbury’s processes 24 million transactions per week, meaning the target equates to around an extra £280m by the year-end.

Social media on Tuesday was awash with delight/outrage at his. A hashtag emerged. Mockery and fury flooded screens.

I’ve been in many, many sales conferences where a till-ring increase push is introduced. All I can say is, the more laser-focused, specific and tailored they are, the more likely that they succeed. Generalised, random wishes for extra added sales? Eish, good luck with that…

footnote…and if you’re running an internal push along similar lines over the next week or so, this tale and pics would duly make a lovely slide and discussion intro to your main event. As also evidenced by the creativity of Sainsbury’s discounting rivals Lidl with their take on the original poster;